Supervisor Lacey Cites Dedication to Others in Her Reelection Race

One summer back when Susan K. Lacey still taught elementary school in Santa Paula, she and her husband, Ed, opened their Ventura home to a 10-year-old child with a learning disability.

The Santa Paula boy was enrolled in a special Ventura summer school, but had no way to get there because his mother did not drive. So each weekday for three months, Lacey ferried him back and forth from school and took him home with her at night.

Lacey is a Ventura County supervisor now, a job she was elected to in 1980 after serving seven years on the board of the Ventura Unified School District. The teaching is now behind her, but colleagues say Lacey has lost none of the compassion that once inspired her to help a troubled child.

As she campaigns for a third term as county supervisor, the 47-year-old incumbent is stressing her contributions to human services in Ventura County, including helping to establish a nationally praised children’s mental health program.

Lacey couples this with an adamant refusal to weaken the guidelines that prohibit development on nearly 500,000 acres of open land in Ventura County, a stance that has gained her allies among environmentalists and anti-growth groups.

After eight years in office, Lacey is a familiar presence throughout the 1st District, which includes slow-growth Ventura, most of the Ojai Valley and the Saticoy-Montalvo area. Many in public agencies praise her as accessible, willing to listen and not afraid to roll up her sleeves and tackle thorny issues.

Others Have Criticism

But others--including five past presidents of the Ventura Chamber of Commerce and one Ventura City Council member--criticize her for a lack of leadership.

Lacey does have the endorsement of Ventura’s two newest City Council members, Richard Francis and Don Villeneuve. She also has been endorsed by the Ventura County Firemen’s Assn., the Ventura Police Officers’ Assn., the Ventura County Alliance for Children and Families, Channel Islands Business and Professional Women, Citizens to Preserve the Ojai and the Environmental Coalition.

But the supervisor is not resting. She has raised $38,000 and is campaigning actively in the last days before Tuesday’s primary, her pace doubtlessly quickened by an opponent who has raised twice as much money and hired a political consultant.

That candidate is 57-year-old rancher-businesswoman Carolyn Leavens, an articulate speaker who has rallied a number of the county’s ranchers and business people to her side. Lacey also faces competition from writer/consultant Robert W. McKay, 54, a former president of the California Wildlife Federation; real estate agent Herschel M. Johnston Jr., 67, and businessman Gary Wean, 66. If no candidate garners more than 50% of the vote Tuesday, the top two contenders will compete in a November runoff.

Leavens, a political newcomer who has served on civic and appointed boards, but has never held elected office, said it is time to revise the long-standing guidelines that govern growth and green space. She hopes to capitalize on the dissatisfaction that a number of ranchers and developers say they feel with Lacey.

“Susan Lacey has been anti-growth,” said Don Edwards, president of the Ventura County chapter of the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California. “Frankly, we would prefer someone with more foresight who sees the need for the county to . . . grow reasonably and responsibly.”

Longtime Ventura City Councilman John McWherter has also criticized Lacey, saying she should have better represented Ventura’s interests in negotiating payment of the Freeman Diversion, a $30-million project to halt seawater intrusion on agricultural lands.

“The Freeman Dam was . . . absolutely no benefit for the city of Ventura and yet the Board of Supervisors wanted us to pay $8 million to construct it,” McWherter said.

In addition, five former Ventura chamber presidents have circulated a letter endorsing Leavens because they say Lacey has failed to adequately address traffic and air pollution concerns and has not done enough to bring new business into the city of Ventura.

Job of City Officials

Lacey counters that city officials, not county supervisors, have the primary responsibility of luring new businesses, if they so choose.

In the early 1980s, Lacey helped put together a landmark county program that set aside about 500,000 acres as greenbelts, which she refers to as “mental health belts.”

She also helped the Local Agency Formation Commission negotiate a deal in which Oxnard gave up the right to develop 2,200 acres of prime agricultural land in El Rio greenbelt in exchange for approval to expand in other areas.

But Lacey is probably better known for her work in the social services sector.

“She’s a very caring person. She would spot a kid she felt had the intellectual capacity to go on to college and give him the motivation to want to go on,” said Ventura County Superior Court Judge William L. Peck, who served with Lacey on the Ventura school board for six years.

‘Guardian Angel’

Dr. Joane Baumer of the West Ventura Family Care Clinic said Lacey was instrumental in getting funding and support to open the medical facility, located in Ventura’s poorest neighborhood, in 1983.

“She is kind of our guardian angel,” Baumer said. “She said, ‘We need a clinic desperately here,’ and was extremely resourceful in marshaling our resources. She knows who to contact in the community.”

However, the accomplishment of which Lacey is most proud is development of the children’s mental health program, which allows courts, schools, foster homes and psychiatrists to work together to treat disturbed children.

While the idea seems simple, mental health experts say that such comprehensive programs are rare and that Ventura County’s model probably leads the country.

“It’s state of the art. It’s what we would like and what we’re pushing on a national level for all communities to have,” said Dr. Ira S. Lourie of the National Institute of Mental Health, which conducts and supports research on the development and improvement of mental health services.

Lacey spearheaded the program in 1981, cajoling department heads to meet weekly for a year at lunch to hammer out a plan. She then persuaded Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) to carry legislation to fund it. Today, Ventura County receives $1.5 million a year for the innovative project, and county mental health officials have flown around the country explaining their model to interested municipalities.

‘Initiated It All’

“Susan initiated it all. And she did it from the first day she was elected,” said Randy Feltman, children’s services manager for the Ventura County Mental Health Department.

Lacey also was instrumental in securing medical services for needy teen-agers through a countywide program to which health professionals donate $500,000 in services annually.

But, they add, Ventura County’s program has helped heal the lives of abused, molested and disturbed children who formerly fell through the bureaucratic cracks.

“I would never say there’s no cracks in the system, but it certainly has plugged up a number of the holes,” said Kate McLean, executive director of Interface, a Camarillo-based nonprofit counseling group.

After more than 15 years in elected office, Lacey has a close relationship with her staff, several of whom came with her from the school board. Many who know her say she takes a personal interest in the accomplishments of her constituents.

‘Susan’s There’

Feltman said Lacey never misses graduation ceremonies at the Phoenix School, a special county program for seriously emotionally disturbed children.

“When those kids succeed after struggling for 10 years, Susan’s there, with no audience and no newspapers, to hand out diplomas,” Feltman said.

Supervisor Madge Schaeffer recalls a morning meeting at which Lacey looked rather wan. It turned out that the Ventura supervisor had been up most of the night soothing a distraught stranger on the first anniversary of her husband’s death.

“She needed someone to talk to,” Lacey explained.

In person, Lacey is low-key, but intense. She says she devotes about 68 hours a week to county issues and, in addition, belongs to dozens of groups that range from the National Criminal Justice Assn. board to the South Central Coast Basinwide Air Pollution Control Council. Perhaps because of this, Lacey is the queen of the acronym, rattling them off rapidly, then stopping to apologize and explain what the letters stand for.

Holds Master’s Degree

Lacey, who has no children of her own, lives with her husband in a mid-Ventura condominium. The two met in San Diego while in the Teacher Corps, the federally funded, educational equivalent of the Peace Corps. They moved to Ventura in 1968 and team-taught special education classes in Santa Paula before Ed Lacey left teaching to become a lawyer.

Susan Lacey continued teaching, meanwhile, and earned a master’s degree in special education from California Lutheran University.

Lacey was inspired to run for the school board in 1971 after learning that the Ventura school district would be forced to lay off teachers if a proposed school bond did not pass.

Lacey lost, but said it was because “I didn’t do my homework.” The next time around, in 1973, she was better prepared. She won by a handy margin.

Vincent Ruiz, who is serving his 18th year as a board member with the Ventura Unified School District, said that while on the school board, Lacey upgraded textbooks, strongly supported an affirmative action program and upgraded morale among teachers.

From the beginning, Lacey’s husband served as her campaign adviser. Today, he holds the title of campaign treasurer and helps write some of the letters and brochures she sends out.

Former and current colleagues say that in addition to Lacey’s humanistic approach to government, her biggest skill lies in organizing groups and shepherding her plans through the complex bureaucracies of local and state governments.

Said Schaeffer: “She’s a problem-solver, but she’s a realist, too. Susan pulls her weight.”